My machines are beginning to fill up and I’ve started making regular SysEx backups of my A4MK2. Does anyone here know details about the contents of these files? Is this a standardized format? Is there maybe even a Java library to handle the content? I’d be interested in writing my own tools to move things around, but not if I have to do all the parsing myself.
The data is packed and unreadable in any meaningful way in a hex editor, you’d need to reverse engineer the packing and then the structure and then repack (not trivial both ways, I’ve done it with DSi stuff which has a different scheme) and compute a valid checksum after that. Other gear like blofeld is stored unpacked so it’s readable by way of a comparison
Packed dumps of multiple files within a larger sysex dump could be split apart just by hunting for the F0/F7s - if you wanted to move a preset from one place to another by hacking the dump then you can often do this as the header before the data is not normally included in the checksum - but hacking beyond that with the Elektron scheme won’t be possible - some values may pack and seem readable, but this is not the case when the stored value is higher as bits get stripped to pack them
SysEx is short for ‘System Exclusive’. I think the whole point of that is to not have to conform to a specific standard.
Thanks guys. I feared as much. Then it would be more trouble than it’s worth. I’d hoping for a little more structure and openness.